


like anything that tasted sweet

by the_anthropologist



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Dreams and Nightmares, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Insecurity, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Keith In The Desert fic (sort of. briefly.), Light Angst, M/M, PTSD probably except nobody is using the word, Post-Series, Team as Family, as in "this is not humor as a genre but in it there is the occasional little joke to lower the tone", coran and everyone's families are in this sort of tangentially, going to be jossed thoroughly and pretty much immediately, keith's abandonment issues, sheith is mild right now but might get more serious
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-06 10:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11599173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_anthropologist/pseuds/the_anthropologist
Summary: The paladins come back from the war.





	1. in all the right places

**Author's Note:**

> Work title is from "Chasing it Down" by Mother Mother and chapter title is from "I've Got Friends" by Manchester Orchestra.  
> Basically, this is another one of those fics where someone needs to explain to Keith that he isn't going to be unceremoniously ditched as soon as everyone is allowed to go home, only that conversation got put off until they actually did all go home instead of being resolved in a flangsty one shot a few months into the mission. And also a meta-fic (not as in "a fic about fic", as in "a fic that is sort of half meta") where people spend a lot of time thinking out essays about what they should realistically do in a situation where everything is happily and promptly resolved. I see a lot of scenarios where they go home at the end, but there's no word about what happens next, and a lot of scenarios where Shit Happened and they pretty much never went back to Earth and ended up just living as The Battle-Scarred Paladins of Voltron amongst aliens forever. Right now, we don't have enough content to give a specific shape to the stuff they'll face or what's going to constitute a victory. Which is great, for me at least, since it means I get to write one of those early seasons fics that are more about the basic type of show we're presented with and what we expect characters to have to do and grow into based on that than about the specific events that actually happened, and how they might end up building on or derailing that format and development. Which is also why I'm pushing myself to at least put this first chapter out before the new season gives me horrible, evil Details and Plot. I would have waited until I'd finished entirely, but instead there's just an outline and a couple of chapters worth of buffer. And at this early stage in canon, I thought it would be cool to look at an unambiguously good ending- they defeated the main force of the Galra empire promptly, without being scarred for life (or at least, not any more scarred for life than you have to be after the stuff that goes on in canon), and got to go back home with people knowing why they disappeared for all that time but not having grounds to abduct them to some government lab to be dissected, etc.- without just dropping things there with an "and they all lived happily ever after." I mean, they are going to all live happily ever after, because I'm a sucker for happy endings. But by god, it's going to be analyzed to hell and back first.

The day after he got back from saving the universe, Keith woke up from a vivid dream.

It was a weird dream. Three cadets from the Garrison were there, who he didn’t know very well, and they were in space, with aliens, and Shiro was _back,_ but he had a robot arm, and the weird cave paintings were about these giant robot lions--

Well. It made a change from the usual dreams. It was better than the ones where he found Shiro, but he was angry Keith hadn’t come sooner and hated him. It was a lot better than the ones where he found Shiro, but he was already dead. Actually, really, genuinely dead, not just legally, Garrison-conspiracy-cover-up dead.

He pushed the dream out of his mind. Dream Shiro had been-- but he needed to find real Shiro. The dream only reinforced the feeling that the markings out in the desert were important, were maybe connected, somehow, to his disappearance. He would go out and record more of them, explore deeper into the cave, pin drawings and photographs and maps on the wall and then, by God, he would stare at them until something clicked. Or he thought of a better way to help Shiro. Or he died.

He rolled out of bed just as he’d done every day for the better part of a year. The floor felt… not as it had every day for the better part of a year. Grittier. Keith blinked at it groggily.

It was just dust. Actually, now that he was looking, everything was covered in a layer of dust. Not the usual layer of dust. Too much dust. He thought he’d been sort of cleaning (not the same as cleaning-cleaning) pretty regularly, but he couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d dusted anything. It couldn’t have been more than two weeks ago. Could it? Everything was so distant.

It was just the dream. The very, very weird dream. Things would stop feeling so hazy once he got moving. He yanked his fingers through his hair and headed outside for water. Hopefully it was still early enough that the water from the pump would be cold.

It was freezing outside, at least by Texan standards, and Keith felt like his skin was trying to crawl back into his body for warmth. It was late spring, though, (wasn’t it?) and he should make the most of the cold days while they lasted. Soon he’d have to go back to moving around at night and sleeping during the day to avoid the risk of heatstroke. The heat made the nightmares worse, and sweatier.

The handle of the pump stuck more than usual too. He leaned on it, finally forcing a gush of water into his giant, all-purpose thermos. He splashed a little on his face, and instantly regretted it as it dripped down his shirt, rendering the air even _more_ freezing. He wiped the excess away from his eyes, blinking away the last of his sleep-bleariness. The dream should have been dissipating already, threads of cause and effect unraveling until he forgot the whole thing. Keith shook his head at himself and repositioned the thermos to keep pumping. Someone coughed.

Keith sprang to his feet and reached for his bayard, which wasn’t there, because bayards only existed in his weird space lion dream and he didn’t actually have one. Even without it, though, he thought he could handle any threat from the men in front of him. There were only two, and they wore Garrison uniforms (what was the Garrison doing out here? They’d already expelled him, and it wasn’t like they had any more right to the damn hoverbike than he did, it was _Shiro’s_ -) and, despite clearly having been here for a while, hadn’t actually _done_ anything. Or said anything. Keith wasn’t very good at people on a normal day, and he didn’t think that there was any social skills class in the world that had a script for dealing with the situation at hand. So he stared at them for a moment, fists up in a defensive stance, and they stared at him, sort of awkwardly, and at length Keith glanced over their shoulders and saw the giant red robot lion standing impassively about a dozen meters behind them.

 _Oh,_ Keith thought.

* * *

Pidge’s mom was pretty much freaking out. Which was probably normal, if your husband and son got lost in space, were presumed dead, and then like a year later your daughter, incidentally the last remaining member of your immediate family, _also_ disappeared and was presumed dead, and then like a year and a half after that came back with your husband and son piloting a giant robot lion that she’d gotten from space to defend the Earth from an alien invasion. In light of all this, it was pretty irrational to want everything to somehow magically (but not space lion magically! Regular Earth magically) go back to normal, and be able to tell her mom about all the cool and scary stuff she did over dinner and maybe have a nice hug and a crying jag together later, because holy fuck had Pidge missed her mom. Obviously they were not going to be able to treat Pidge and Matt and Dad’s terrifying space adventure like it had just been a really busy day at school. Probably Pidge didn’t even really want to treat it that way. It had been sort of possible to just- put it out of her mind, while she was out there, that she was light years away from home and none of her family knew where she was or what she was doing, that her mom probably thought she was dead, and that she could _be_ dead at any moment, from any number of terrifying alien space threats or even if she just got some kind of dumb space flu that the castle’s ten thousand year old technology couldn’t handle, because space was goddamn dangerous and humans were squishy. Now she was home, and safe, and she couldn’t stop thinking, _Holy shit, I could have died. I almost did die, like 30 times. That’s way too many times!_ And her mom was clearly thinking the same thing, possibly even more than Pidge was. And then crying about it.

Not to mention that Matt and her dad were also… not totally okay. Her dad would just stop, sometimes, looking right through everything, or staring for too long like he was still deciding whether or not it was real. He’d stop when her mom cried, too, but less like he was dissociating and more like he just didn’t know what to do about it, which Pidge could hardly blame him for, seeing as she felt the same way. Matt wasn’t too different, except that he’d been in space for a year longer than Pidge and had apparently gone native. Or possibly feral, depending. He had a short sword that he’d picked up somewhere along the way, and he hadn’t actually put it away since he’d gotten back. He hadn’t been happy about the Garrison guys taking his blaster away after the final battle.

Pidge didn’t actually feel totally comfortable without her armor or her bayard either, and she’d only left them in her lion, not had them confiscated by the men in black. Of course, they _would_ have been confiscated, and the lion too, except that none of the lions were particularly willing to be confiscated, and since their technology was light years (literally) beyond Earth’s, the lions were pretty much unconfiscatable. Maybe Pidge should have tried to get the blaster into her lion before the goons grabbed it, although she didn’t think that Matt would have reacted much better to his own sister disarming him.

But it was a new day now. The universe was safe, which meant that Pidge got to wake up in her own Earth bed, surrounded by warm Earth air and familiar-unfamiliar Earth smells, in her comforting Earth bedroom which had somehow shifted sideways in her memory and now seemed more alien for the lack of Altean architecture and the castle-ship’s mechanical hum. The universe was safe because Pidge had saved the universe. What are you supposed to do after you save the universe? She probably couldn’t just go back to being a cadet.

 _Well,_ Pidge thought, _I guess right now I’m just supposed to have breakfast._

* * *

There was a sickening moment of vertigo as Keith reoriented his whole view of reality to include things like aliens and people-other-than-Shiro-who-give-a-shit-about-Keith. Then a general sickening, like his stomach had taken a nose dive, as he slotted this morning into place in his memory. The guards for Red were still there. Mustering up all of the impromptu training in interplanetary diplomacy he had acquired during his time as a paladin, he said, “Hi.” They didn’t respond for a full second, which was enough for Keith to change his mind and go with his first instinct, which was to make a rapid tactical retreat back inside. The thermos was abandoned as dead weight.

After the final battle, with the Castle of Lions in orbit around Earth, the paladins of Voltron had watched from the viewing port as dawn crept over the western United States. Debris from destroyed Galra ships drifted alongside them, sending up little flares as smaller shards broke orbit and were dragged down to burn up in the atmosphere. Pidge had broken the silence.

“It’s over,” she said in a small voice, nearly a whisper.

“We won!” Hunk added, a little more brightly.

“We get to go _home_ ,” Lance said, with transparent longing.

Shiro had reached out and clasped Keith’s shoulder. He let himself lean into it. He’d spent the hours of battle flying. Shiro’s touch brought him down to Earth.

“We can all go down as soon as we’re up to it. The Galaxy Garrison has agreed not to treat us as a threat, so we have permission to pilot our lions down to wherever we’re going as long as we avoid any Earth aircraft. Make sure to pack anything you want to take from the Castle,” Shiro announced. Hunk and Lance dashed off to pack their things, and Pidge to tell Sam and Matt that they could finally head home.

“Keith,” Shiro began. Keith watched one of their allies’ ships drift along at the edge of his view. “I’m going to go see my dad and my grandma, let them know I’m alive. Take a week before I try to talk to the Garrison and everyone else and figure out what we’re going to do next.” Shiro ran a hand over his face. There was a bone deep exhaustion in the gesture that Keith wasn’t sure he’d been capable of when they’d first met. Maybe not even when they first became paladins. “I know you don’t have- I mean, if you want you can come with me. I’m sure they’d love to meet you.”

Keith was very glad that he wasn’t looking at Shiro, because he knew that Shiro would be, to all appearances, utterly sincere and upsettingly gorgeous, and now was not the time for Keith to be selfish. Shiro needed to reunite with his family, and Keith was going to be in the way. It would only be for a week, and then- well, Shiro hadn’t said, but he implied he’d be going back to the Garrison. Maybe Keith could catch up with him then? They could both probably use a week, just to figure out what they wanted to happen next. Voltron was- over. It didn’t matter if it had been the best time in Keith’s life so far, the only time when he’d felt… right, or close to whole. The mission was done, and it was time to move on. He could figure out what the next mission would be, something he could do with his life with no Voltron and no Garrison, and he could keep in touch with Shiro and the other paladins. It wouldn’t be like before. It was ridiculous to want it to be like before; they all deserved to go back to their real families. They would probably still be willing to see Keith every so often. They would be- friends. Who don’t all live together on a spaceship and mystically bond through robots, but most people prefer that level of separation from their friends. And he could figure out something that would let him stay close to Shiro. He might be able to live without Hunk and Pidge and Lance and Allura and Coran, as long as he didn’t lose Shiro again. Keith could not lose Shiro again.

A week wasn’t that long. He’d figure out how to live without Voltron, and let Shiro have his family time, and it wouldn’t be forever. Shiro didn’t actually say it wouldn’t be forever, but it was probably implied. It didn’t matter that this would be the first time since they met that Shiro didn’t actually have to be in close quarters with him. They were friends! Shiro cared about him!

Having thus steeled himself, Keith said, “I think I’d probably just make things awkward.” He turned to Shiro, who was already opening his mouth to protest, and touched his elbow tentatively. “Shiro, it’s fine. They’re your family. You deserve some time alone together, after everything.” When Shiro’s brow remained furrowed in concern, Keith tried a smile. “Anyway,” he finished, “it’s not like I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

But now, in his dubiously constructed shack in the middle of the desert (AKA, Anywhere Else), Keith regretted fiercely that he hadn’t asked the question that his pride and his fear had prevented him from asking then: _Will you come back for me?_

Now, in his desolate shack in the middle of the desert, he found it hard to believe that Shiro would.

* * *

Hunk was making dinner with his ma when he realized that this was the longest time he’d voluntarily spent away from Lance in nearly two years. Which was an odd thought- he didn’t really think of himself as the sort of person who was joined at the hip with his friends. He didn’t have a problem spending time alone, or just with his moms; Hunk was a social person, but he still felt the need for some separation and solitude. It was just that at the Garrison they’d had classes together, and there wasn’t really anyone else to hang out with on the weekends, and then they were living together on the castle-ship all the time except for getting separated or captured by the Galra.

This time, though, it wasn’t Galra soldiers that had separated them and dragged the blue and yellow paladins back to their respective lairs. Just Hunk’s moms and Lance’s gaggle of siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles and parents and a couple of grandparents and great aunts for good measure. They’d touched down together in the park they used to play in when they were kids and instantly been swamped by relieved, often weeping family members. There were group hugs. A few people hugged each other when they couldn’t get to Hunk or Lance. A few people hugged the passersby who had stopped to gawk at the lions.

Then the paladins had both been bundled off to their family homes for Reassuring and Relationship Affirming Activities. In Hunk’s case, that meant a lot of cooking, and a lot of eating. Food was the major way that his family expressed their feelings, once they’d had enough of hugging and weeping.

Hunk found this ritual viscerally comforting. While in space, his experiences had driven him to heretofore unknown heights of anxiety, paranoia, and sheer pants-wetting terror. Eating a meat pie fresh out of the oven at home with his moms was a feeling of equal and opposite intensity.

Better yet, they had had several long talks, and Hunk no longer had to wonder what they were up to, how they were coping, and if they were even okay at all while he was away. They had described their grief, their hope for his safe return, and the inexorable developments of life during his months of absence. In return he had described his fear and uncertainty and his greatest adventures as a paladin of Voltron. The strange and wonderful things he had seen, his great triumphs and defeats, the things he had learned, the friends he had made. All the time he had spent fighting the Galra, a part of him had wondered what his moms would think of him now. Whether they would be proud.

And they were proud! Hunk should have been totally satisfied. It was just that, well… they didn’t completely seem to believe him.

Not that they said anything, or like they thought he was lying. More like it just... didn’t really register with them, what had happened to him. What he’d done. He would say, “Then I shot the guards with my bayard and rescued the alien princess,” and they would look impressed. Or he’d say, “And then the Galra ship managed to hit my lion, and I almost crashed to my death on one of the planet’s moons,” and they would make worried noises. But none of it really changed what they thought of him, or what sort of space he fit into in their lives.

Maybe it wasn’t supposed to change anything. They were his _parents_. Even if he was twice his ma’s size and three times his mom’s, an adult by law, and a Defender of the Universe, to them he would always be, on some level, the chubby four year old that didn’t even make it to mom’s hip. Squishy, anxious Hunk. It was an image so fundamentally incompatible with intergalactic war that they just sort of… skipped over it. They would ask more about his friends, the other paladins. They would hug him when he talked about his homesickness. But they skipped over the whole subject of _fighting,_ or _mortal danger_ , or _alien invasions_ like a scratched CD.

Hunk had fought monsters and saved worlds, and by the end of it, he barely even needed his breathing exercises to set aside the instinctive panic. He hadn’t realized until he got home how un-squishy and un-anxious he had begun to feel, and how important that had been to him. He didn’t to be squishy, anxious Hunk again. He wasn’t sure he could be even if he did want to.

* * *

Keith spent the rest of the day reading. There were a number of old books left lying around the shack, some of which he hadn’t gotten to in his previous year of habitation. He’d started _Watership Down_ , which failed entirely in distracting him from- everything, switched to _White Fang_ , which was almost worse, and finally settled on _A Walk in the Woods,_ which was geographically incongruous but at least didn’t make him think about Voltron, Shiro, or anything to do with his own life.

Shiro was definitely (probably (maybe (probably not))) coming back for him, and he was only going to spend a week alone (again, forever). This Keith told himself when he stopped reading to eat some of the canned food, or went out to retrieve his thermos and came face to face with his lion again. He told himself so especially hard as he lay in bed, trying to forget the incongruous presence of the two guards outside his solitary outpost, unable to sink into the familiar presence of Red, unsure if he would ever fly her with purpose again.


	2. dry like sheets in the wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Lance is antsy, Allura is a princess, and Keith makes lists.

The second night after he got back from saving the universe, Keith dreamt of the desert.

In the dream, the stars would change places whenever he stopped watching them. He watched them closely as he walked across cool, dry earth. There was no direction.

Eventually, he walked up into the air. He rose for a long time. He made sure the stars didn’t move.

Eventually, like Lot’s wife, he looked down.

 

* * *

 

Lance lasted about two days on Earth before he started going stir crazy.

It wasn’t like he had a shortage of things to do. There were new seasons of a dozen of his favorite TV shows. His younger siblings tried to drag him off to play every couple of hours. He had access to all the well-loved Earth music that he had missed, and Earth video games, and Earth food, and Earth movies, hell, Lance could probably spend a few hours happily just basking in the Earth weather. But every time he was doing any of those things, he only made it a half hour at most before alarm bells sounded in his head.

 _Did you train yet today?_  the alarms nagged.  _Is Blue in top condition? Where’s Allura and Coran and the other paladins? What are the Galra going to do next? We need to get more intelligence. We need to look for a mission. We need to keep moving before the Galra find us. We need to train more. We need to-_

And then Lance would remind himself that he didn’t need to do any of those things. He was on Earth. He had saved the universe. There was no war.

It might have been easier to reassure himself of that if he could just check in with the other paladins. Being with his family was like the dreams he’d had on the castle-ship, the good ones that made him long powerfully for home, but at least didn’t eject him, heart pounding, from unrestful sleep. Dreams where he had never left Earth, and the war was just a nightmare he had had. A book he had read. A passing fancy.

Living those dreams out proved less of a relief than he had imagined. With every second that passed, he was sure that the next would mark the instant where reality popped like a soap bubble, leaving him back in his bunk in the castle, just woken by Allura’s call to battle.

Two days of that was enough to send him out of the house, pacing toward his lion and then pacing back, like waves on a beach. He’d make for the lion to be reassured that it was there, while his family watched like they didn’t quite believe it either. That he had been gone, and that he was back. That he wasn’t about to climb into Blue and blast off into space again, this time for good. And then he would see the guards, and realize that he didn’t know what he was planning to do with the lion once he got there, and he would flow back.

He wished he could call Hunk, or any of the other paladins. Maybe he would be able to settle if he could just hear that they were okay and weren’t off fighting the fight without him. But this was their first real vacation in over a year, not just from Voltron, but from each other. They all needed some time with just their families, getting used to normal life again. And soon enough, they’d probably all be back at the Garrison together anyway. After all, the whole point of being on Earth was for things to go back to normal.

With Blue’s pupil-less eyes following him, Lance found normal a bit harder to define.

 

* * *

 

On the third day, Keith resolved to finally figure out what he wanted to do now that the mission was over. This he decided to accomplish by writing lists.

The first list was entitled “Things to Do After This Week”, and it said:

  1. _Find out more about my mother_
  2. _Go with Allura and Coran to look for other Alteans_
  3. _Try to go back to the Garrison and become an Earth pilot_
  4. _Wait for Shiro and do something that will let me be close to whatever he decides_



Then he realized that the first and second items could likely be done simultaneously, and he drew a line connecting them.

Next, he made four more lists, and titled them “Finding Out More about My Mother”, “Going with Allura and Coran”, “Going Back to the Garrison”, and “Waiting for Shiro”. He divided each with a line, and labelled the sides “Pro” and “Con”.

The first list said:

_Finding Out More about My Mother_

_Pro:_

_Wanted to do it but never had time b/c Galra, etc._

_Get to fly Red_

_Get to explore space_

_Con:_

_Will be alone again_

The second list said:

_Going With Allura and Coran_

_Pro:_

_Will at least have Allura and Coran_

_Can simultaneously get intel re: mother_

_See previous list_

_Con:_

_Third wheel_

_Allura and Coran might not want me to come_

_Still not very good at diplomacy_

The third list:

_Going Back to the Garrison_

_Pro:_

_What I was planning to do before Galra, etc._

_Other paladins might be there_

_Con:_

_They expelled me_

_Might not be possible anyway_

_Will have to pilot Earth spacecraft (not as good as Red)_

Finally, he came to the last option:

_Waiting for Shiro_

_Pro:_

_Shiro_

_Con:_

_Not very concrete plan_

_Pathetic_

He looked at his lists in consternation. He shuffled the lists around on his makeshift coffee table and continued to look at them in consternation. He paced, which had never done much for him but seemed like the sort of thing that a person was expected to do in this situation.

For the past year and a half Keith had been studiously avoiding the realization that, unlike his fellow paladins and, he presumed, most of the rest of the human race as well, he did not, in actuality, like Earth. Having seen a number of other planets, he could concede that it wasn’t the worst planet in the universe by a long shot. He was sure it had its good points. Unfortunately, the planet of his birth simply wasn’t Keith’s cup of tea.

He’d wondered, on occasion, if some of that lukewarm regard might be due to his Galra heritage. Surely a half-alien couldn’t be expected to love Earth as much as a native. More often, he felt it was just an attitude endemic to Keith himself.

Despite his lack of enthusiasm for the planet, even back when it was the only one he knew, Keith mostly went along with his teammates’ desire to return. It was painful and distracting to think too much about the future- whether they would win or lose, live or die- and so he’d delegated the task to Future Keith.

Future Keith was forced to acknowledge that life on Earth didn’t really appeal to him. The only reason he was seriously considering it was- well, “pathetic” was what he’d written on the list.

For most of his life, he’d been alone. Shuffled from home to home, too odd (too socially inept, too alien, too difficult, too  _Keith_ ) to make friends, he had never gotten close enough to another person for the lack of closeness to make a difference. Sure, it had hurt. But he didn’t know any way to change it, so it hadn’t mattered. He had gone after what he wanted, regardless of how lonely it would be: escaping the Earth, exploring space,  _flying_.

He had all that, as long as he had Red. But he couldn’t take it without losing his friends.

Keith knew from experience that he was likely to lose his friends anyway. And however close he had grown to his team during their journey, there was still a part of him that couldn’t, wouldn’t let go of his independence. He couldn’t make decisions based solely on his desire (need) for companionship. He had to go after what he knew he wanted, what he felt down to his marrow he was born for: flight.

It would break Keith’s heart to stay on Earth. He might be willing to do that, for friends. For family. For Shiro. But he couldn’t decide until he found out what the others were doing, and what his options really were. The other paladins were with their families, but Allura and Coran might still be in orbit. He could talk to them, at least, and find out what their plans were in particular, and whether or not they’d be willing to have him along.

Decided, Keith walked past the two guards, both visibly conflicted as to whether they should stop him, and let Red scoop him up in a practiced move. At her controls once again, he felt the pleased thrum of their bond as he took off for the Castle of Lions.

 

* * *

 

Allura and Coran, as it happened, were not still in orbit. And unlike the paladins, they weren’t taking a vacation, either.

Were it in any way befitting of a princess, Allura would certainly be inclined to take a vacation. In fact, she was  _inclined_  to take a vacation as it was. But alas, she had Duties, and Responsibilities, and other high-minded values which in her head were always spoken in her father’s gravest and most kingly voice. Unfortunately, Alfor’s gravest and most kingly voice was doing very little to stave off her growing headache.

“We will be happy to return you to your homeworld as soon as our ship is fully repaired,” she explained yet again to the leader of yet another planetary militia, noble warrior band, and/or ragtag bunch of misfits. “This may not be for the duration of several of your standard day cycles. We will be sure to tell you more as soon as we can,” she recited, smiling (this particular species looked similar enough to Alteans to understand smiling) as she cut the connection without waiting for a response. Allura suspected that this was also unbefitting of a princess, but some concessions to circumstance had to be made.

The mismatched army which had (with some help from local forces) defended the Earth from invasion and secured final surrender from Prince Lotor’s second in command was, to the deep displeasure of all involved, still in the Sol system, circling Mars in a disgruntled, ethnically diverse cloud. This was, as Allura had taken to reminding herself several times a varga, because she had promised Shiro that she would wait eight of Earth’s rotations to hear from the paladins, because it was her Responsibility to establish diplomatic relations between humans and the new Universal Alliance, and lastly, as she had taken to reminding everybody  _else_  several times a varga, because the Castle of Lions had taken serious damage during the battle and would not be able to form wormholes until it was repaired, and furthermore, you all could just as easily have demanded rides back to your home systems as part of the terms of surrender, but  _noooo,_  the Galra simply weren’t trustworthy, and surely we could all just wait until the nice Alteans could make everyone wormholes to get back?

Of course, that plan, much like the let’s-have-Zarkon-pilot-the-black-lion plan of 10,000 years before, had proven to be much better in theory than in practice. The warriors who were stranded in the Sol system quickly grew impatient. Their governments and families, left on their respective planets,  _very_  quickly grew impatient. The diplomats who had agreed to a summit and official treaty signing in the Castle of Lions had passed beyond impatience and were quickly growing frantic. It turned out that it was difficult to ensure that your defeated enemies would adhere to the terms of their surrender when they could wormhole around to their bases all across the universe and you couldn’t.

Part of this problem might have been solved had the army been allowed to land and make camp, something which had been suggested to Allura many times, with many varying degrees of politeness, since the battle had ended. This, however, was not to be, mainly because humans are quiznakking difficult.

Allura had already noticed that the paladins were difficult, but had chalked that up to their relative youth. Like Altean youngsters, they could be temperamental, impulsive, unreasonable, and hard to direct, but this was something that she assumed they, also like Alteans, tended to mature out of.

Having now encountered many more humans than just the paladins, she could say with confidence that it was not just the follies of youth that made them utterly impossible. As a species which hadn’t yet achieved interstellar flight or encountered any alien life, it wasn’t unexpected that they would be divided into several distinct nations and autonomous states. It was also reasonable to extrapolate that, due to their relative isolation, said species would not be familiar with the legendary yet benevolent force that was Voltron, and thus lack a certain reverence. Allura’s many lessons in interplanetary diplomacy simply hadn’t mentioned how  _frustrating_  first contact with such a species could be.

First, she and Shiro had needed to actively convince a number of institutions (Shiro had referred to them as “the Galaxy Garrison and, uh, the U.S. government, mainly,” which had clarified very little for her) to actually allow the paladins to land on their own home planet. This had taken nearly a quintent in itself. Then, once the paladins had left, she had attempted to make contact with some of the larger states and been put on hold. She had managed to get ahold of the leader of what Allura guessed was probably a medium sized state close to the center of the planet’s largest continent, which prompted a nearby territory to attempt to make contact as well, and immediately. This in turn prompted a few other leaders to publically threaten to launch nuclear weapons at the Castle of Lions if it and the rest of the army did not leave orbit. Several more strongly implied that they were considering the option. A nice intern from a little island nation had explained that there were “international tensions” at play which made certain states afraid that the Universal Alliance would show favor to their rivals, and also that Earth had just fended off one alien invasion and thus was a bit leery of the alien army still hanging around their planet. Allura’s attempt to explain that the Universal Alliance were good aliens who had helped defend Earth, and furthermore had come to assist Voltron in their quest to defend the universe, restore peace and justice, etc., was not effective. The nice intern had told her about a number of Earth legends where aliens conquered the planet, destroyed a lot of stuff, and enslaved, eradicated, or ate all the humans. Allura had decided against explaining that Alteans were herbivores and agreed to relocate the fleet to the fourth planet. Some other humans had protested quite vehemently that the fleet could not land on the fourth planet, much to the chagrin of both Allura and the original humans. The nice intern had explained that it would be bad for the fleet to land there because the humans “hadn’t finished exploring Mars yet” and suspected that it might harbor alien life. Allura had refrained from telling them just how much alien life Mars would harbor if the army were allowed to make camp there, and instead negotiated permission to simply  _orbit_  the planet.

Once they had made orbit, Allura had continued her attempts to convince the humans to at least call some kind of convocation in order to discuss the formation of a collective diplomatic body for the purposes of foreign policy and thereby the issue of Earth joining the Universal Alliance and made little progress. The nice intern suggested that Allura was being taken less seriously due to “looking about twenty” and when prompted further explained that monarchy was no longer a popular form of government on Earth, making her status as a princess less relevant. At that, Allura had given up and told Coran to handle it, albeit in a way that sounded far more Responsible and Befitting of a Princess.

So when the red lion launched out of Earth’s atmosphere, Allura heaved a sigh that was also fairly unbefitting of a princess. Some concessions to circumstance had to be made.

 

* * *

 

Keith imagined that there would be a lot of people asking him what the hell he was doing if Red had access to radio. Despite this, he didn’t really ask  _himself_  what the hell he was doing until he blasted through the upper atmosphere to find the castle-ship already gone.

He hadn’t actually considered what he would do if Allura and Coran had already left. He could still call them via the lion- Altean communications technology didn’t actually seem to have a range limit. Then he would have to explain what he was calling about, and ask her if she’d be willing to make a wormhole for him to get to whatever far corner of the universe she and Coran had run off to. It wasn’t really any less practical than just showing up outside the castle unannounced, but… somehow it seemed riskier. Like if he could get to the castle himself, they’d have less reason not to let him tag along. Asking for the slightest bit of effort on their part felt like it multiplied the chances of rejection exponentially. Keith knew he had to do it. He’d already made the decision to at least talk to the Alteans. But it would hurt so much more, after everything, if they told him that they didn’t want him either.

Keith took more time then he would usually allow himself to muster the nerve to make the call. He was still mustering when somebody hailed him first.

“Thank the Urqueen!” exclaimed what Keith guessed was one of the Montolians. At least, he had armor that mimicked the appearance of his yellow-orange exoskeleton, which was definitely characteristic of one of their allied species whose name began in M. Or N. Something like that. “Are you here to help fix the Castle of Lions? Do you know when the repairs will be done? Princess Allura,” here a gesture of the antennae that Keith remembered denoting either great respect or great insult, “hasn’t been very helpful so far.”

“Huh?” Keith said, articulately. The Montolian was about to explain when a second hail came from the castle itself. With some relief, he interrupted, “Excuse me,” hanging up on the overeager warrior.

Allura, to put it generously (and Keith always felt a need to be a bit generous with Allura), did not seem to be having a nice day. Her left eye twitched ever so slightly, and there was a mouse caught in her voluminous hair. “Hello, Keith,” she said, with only the barest and most discreet trace of strain. “Was there something you or the other paladins needed?”

“No, uh, not exactly- Princess, are you alright?” Keith asked, his eyebrows drawn together.

“I’m just fine!” Her eye twitched again as a bright, metallic clatter arose from somewhere out of view. “If you could just tell me what it was you came out here for-”

Mentally, Red gave Keith a nudge towards Mars, which he followed without much consideration. “I wanted to talk to you, but you don’t seem…” he trailed off as the fleet came into view. “Allura, what happened to the castle?”

She sighed, her attempt at formal politeness deflating like a punctured balloon. “It was damaged in the battle,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to worry you. You’ve all been away from home for so long…”

Keith thought that the same could be said for Allura, except that she didn’t get to go back now that the war was won. “Is there anything I can do to help? One of the Montolians was asking if I was here to help with the repairs.”

“Well,” she said, beginning to disentangle the mouse with gentle tugs, “it  _would_  help if you could close the hole for us.”

“Hole” was perhaps an understatement. One of the castle’s four spires had been partly ripped away, leaving it and a chunk of the central body’s hull hanging off at an odd angle. Sky blue crackles of electricity occasionally pulsed between the ragged edges of the gap, zig-zagging across an invisible surface.

It looked pretty bad. “Why didn’t you have us close it before we left? Or use a different ship,” Keith asked.

“The castle’s healing would have gotten to it eventually,” she replied, waving off his concern. “And we don’t have any other ships that can grab things.”

“I guess building spaceships with paws went out of fashion sometime in the last ten thousand years.” Allura looked less amused at this and more relieved to see that someone else shared her exasperation with the modern art of spaceship design. Changing the subject before she could commiserate, Keith continued, “So, do I just… bend it back?” The relative ease with which most repairs to the castleship were conducted was still shocking to him. Even Earth spacecraft, which were far less complex and far less advanced, required a great deal of precision to work with and could rarely recover from serious damage on the fly. The Castle of Lions, by contrast, could handle most of the fine detail itself. The work of the actual human (or, more commonly, alien) mechanic was mainly to acquire the right materials and fit all the pieces back where they belonged.

“Carefully,” Allura cautioned, and so he was careful. Red gripped the jagged edge of the torn hull with her front claws, and Keith gently pulled it back into place, at least approximately. The mass of the spire, even in zero gravity, was a strain on his lion, and he was leery of causing further damage- the spire looked like a pull in the wrong direction might tear it away from the castle entirely. The whole process ended up taking about an hour.

During that hour, Allura talked. Keith was concentrating too hard to respond much, but he listened a little absently as she caught him up on the events of the last few days, complained about Earth politics, space politics, and the damage to the castle, and spoke, almost hesitantly, of her doubts and hopes for the future of the Universal Alliance they had assembled to combat the Galra Empire. Even if he couldn’t fully focus on the words, there was something immensely stabilizing to Keith about just hearing a friendly voice, talking to him as he piloted Red in a simple, safe maneuver.

By the time he finished, he was a lot less nervous about what he had to ask. “Allura, is it okay if I dock? I actually did have something to talk to you about.”

Allura’s assent was enthusiastic with the repairs significantly expedited, and Keith parked Red in her usual hangar with a sense of displaced familiarity. It reminded him of the first time he’d shown up at his high school on a Saturday for detention.

Walking through the castle again made the feeling worse. Every familiar thing reminded him all over again that, while he might continue to walk these halls in the future, the chapter of his life that had made them almost homelike was closed. There was every chance that he could have the castle back. But the purpose that had kept him there was gone, and even if he could still see them on Earth… he knew that he had lost his friends.

He met Allura in the engine room, finding her sans mouse and flipping through a yellowed book about as thick as his head. The text was in Altean.

She looked up when he came in, appearing a shade or two less frazzled than she had been previously. “So, what conversation is so urgent that you needed to come all the way out here right away?” she asked.

Heat washed over Keith’s face, although if he was blushing he chose not to know about it. “It wasn’t really that urgent, I guess,” he admitted, scrubbing a hand through the hair at the nape of his neck. "I just wanted to ask, uh, what you and Coran were going to do, now that the Galra are defeated. And- if I could come.”

Allura looked at him oddly. “Well, first of all we need to get the castle back up and running, so we can send everyone home. Then we’ll have to help organize the peace talks, which could take centants. After that… we don’t have concrete plans. It depends on how the talks go. We want to look for other Alteans, descendants of the-” she swallowed painfully- “survivors. There might not be any pure Alteans left, but... the only thing to do now is to try to preserve what’s left of our culture. Create some kind of enclave.” She met his gaze steadily, clamping down on the tearful wobbliness that threatened the corners of her eyes. “But Keith, that duty is mine alone. Whatever obligation you might have had as a paladin-”

“Allura, please,” he interrupted. “If you don’t want me here- say the word and I’ll go.” Over the beginnings of her protest, he continued, “But there’s nothing left for me on Earth. I want to- I want to help you.” This pained him to say, and wasn’t all that he could have said. But it was, for the most part, true.

“If you’re sure,” she said gently, laying a hand on his shoulder, “you’re welcome to go with us for as long as you’d like. You’ll always be welcome here.” She glanced about the room for a moment, then added, more brightly, “And you’ve been a great help around here already. If you don’t have to leave already, I could use ‘another pair of hands’, as you humans put it.”

Immensely grateful for the distraction, Keith assented. Allura directed him on how to do the simpler tasks of the repairs, referring often to the massive manual he had seen her flipping through earlier, while she herself continued to field calls from the various parties in urgent (at least according to them) need of the castle’s wormhole capabilities. Her new timetable of a quintent and a half to complete the repairs was met with some grumbling, although the venom had mostly gone out of it. During a brief break, she confessed to Keith that power enough to keep their ships running would have become a problem for a few of the factions present in about three quintents, and that she had been unsure of her ability to meet the implicit deadline.

Finally, after several hours of work, Keith returned to the small room that had been his since he first arrived at the castle, finding it as he had left it: bare and sterile, hardly distinguishable from the moment the castle had awoken from its 10,000 year sleep. In minutes, he fell into a long sleep of his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Forever Song" by Josh Pyke! If I keep going like this the title songs might even turn into a Playlist, which of course nobody will care about. I mean, if you do, I'll probably have said playlist on 8tracks or Spotify or something and then post a link with the last chapter, so nobody else caring won't be a barrier to you getting what you want. All the songs are like, Thematically Relevant, I swear.  
> I have really strong feelings about Allura's role as a princess, especially in a culture where that's an actual political office and not just a figurehead position. Those feelings are definitely coming out in this fic. No Shiro bit yet, but he gets a nice long one next chapter (which will be posted next week), I promise.  
> Also, I'm on tumblr at descriptor-character.tumblr.com. I post some Voltron stuff. I post some other stuff. I might even post writing updates! (Imagine. A writer, posting writing updates.) I've been inactive for a little while, partially because I actually do have a life that often distracts me from tumblr, and partially because I've been in Wales and the tumblr interface seriously clashes with the pastoral landscape ("pastoral landscape" here being a euphemism for "sheep"). But hey, don't let that deter you from following me! Let my content and basic personality do that.


	3. the only piece of advice that continues to help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Shiro and Keith have a conversation. It isn't very effective.

The night after he returned to the Castle of Lions, Keith dreamt of space.

The beginning of the dream was a memory. He lay on a thin blanket over lukewarm red stone. It was two hours past sunset, the stars overhead now faded fully into view. It was perfect, and Shiro was there.

This time, instead of getting on Shiro’s hoverbike and going back to the Garrison, they became lions. He followed Shiro up into the great starry sky, and up and up and up until there was no longer any direction. It was like a game. He chased Shiro for hours, dipping and whirling and dodging through stars that were smaller and closer than any star could ever be. They were warm and candle-bright as Christmas lights.

He chased Shiro until Shiro got away from him, and he couldn’t keep up.

 

* * *

 

The fourth day of Shiro’s planned vacation dawned strange and dreamlike, much the same as the previous three. This he met with deeply ingrained equanimity, a characteristic which his years in space had managed to strain, but never truly destroy.

Shiroganes in general were not by nature prone to hysteria. His dad and grandmother had both greeted his return with quiet directness, anchoring everyone to a new reality with long, meaningful discussions; firm, grounding touches; and some discreet weeping. While they were present, this went a long way toward convincing Shiro of the absolute realness of his return. In the moments when he was alone, the calm after all the chaos of the war made everything seem even more surreal. Grief lingered in the apartment like smoke, unable to dissipate in only days after years of mourning. It made him feel, sometimes, as if he was a ghost, intangibly haunting the people he left behind.

The sense of unreality, he had decided, was probably the reason he wished so often that Keith had agreed to come along. He could believe everything that had happened if he just had someone else around to verify it- someone who he hadn’t been a ghost to for the past few years.

The other reason, of course, was that even when things were normal (or as normal as they can get when you live on a spaceship with the last survivors of a ten thousand year old alien civilization and four cadets who form the limbs of the giant robot whose torso you pilot), Shiro tended to think about Keith. A lot.

That morning’s Keith thoughts went something like this: _Why didn’t Keith come with me? It’s not that I don’t see his point about the awkwardness, but what else is he planning to do this week? Did he just go back to that shack? Has he spoken to the others? Should_ I _be speaking to the others? Maybe I should contact him to make sure that he’s okay. No, that’s ridiculous, if he wanted to talk to you he could just call you. You did invite him along. For god’s sake, he was trapped on a spaceship with you for over a year. He’s probably enjoying the break._ I’m _not enjoying the break, but that’s because I’m in love with Keith. Keith’s an independent guy who is not in love with me, and he’s probably relieved. He’d call if he wasn’t fine, wouldn’t he? He has to know that I’d be there for him. And what next? Is he going to want to go back to the Garrison? I don’t know if I can trust them after the way they treated me when I escaped. Piloting Red suits him so much better- it’s like he was born to fly her. He was born to fly in general, but our spaceships have nothing on the lions. I don’t know if I could give it up either. We could fly off in our lions and explore space together, like we used to talk about, before the Galra…_

These Keith thoughts were, incidentally, very similar to the Keith thoughts of the previous two mornings, and equally unproductive. Despite his intention to take a break from leaderly concerns, Shiro decided to worry about something productive instead, and went to check the news.

He had been borrowing his Dad’s laptop to do this since he arrived, as his own was… unspecifically gone. His best guess, given what he’d seen the last time he was on Earth, was that Keith had taken it to the shack along with whatever other belongings he had left at the Garrison when he went to Kerberos. The disposition of his computer in particular hadn’t really come up while they were fighting the Galra.

He was looking mainly for any news about the other paladins or the allied fleet. He felt obligated to keep tabs on the situation- ultimately, he still saw it as his responsibility to lead the team, and that meant leading them back into their lives on Earth if necessary. He couldn’t effectively do that if he wasn’t fully aware of their situation. Beyond that, now that they were separated, he couldn’t stop worrying about the possibility that some kind of attack or emergency would arise for one member, and the rest might not be able to offer help in time. Even more than ordinary comrades in arms, paladins of Voltron found power and safety in numbers.

Finding out that Keith had, without any apparent warning or provocation, taken off for Mars in the red lion did little to assuage either his Keith-related or team-related worries.

There was a shaky cell phone video going around of some distant speck blasting off in the desert, which was probably Red. There were statements issued to the effect that people who had the authority to do such things had been in contact with the alien army and were confident that this was not a sign of another Galra attack. There was a conspicuous silence regarding whether it was a prelude to an Altean attack, a fact which naturally bothered Shiro less than it did most human commentators. Despite the concerning lack of information, a large part of him was actually relieved. This, at least, was a very good excuse to call Keith and ask how he was doing.

Shiro hadn’t approached Black since he’d arrived back home, the longest he’d stayed away since the early days, when he was still uncertain of their bond. It was awkward, to say the least, to get close to her when there were two guards and an ever-changing cluster of gawkers there to watch.

He had left her standing by the curb in front of the apartment complex, which had done a great deal to obstruct traffic despite all care taken to avoid blocking the road. Aside from the perpetual jam of drivers slowing to a crawl for a better look, Shiro had also noted, privately, that Black was parked on a residential street without a permit. It was at once a relief and a disappointment to find that nobody actually had the audacity to ticket a lion of Voltron.

The guards (different than the first two, but in identical Garrison uniforms) both situated themselves very firmly between Shiro and Black when they saw him, although they didn’t seem completely certain as to precisely which part of the lion they were meant to be blocking. Shiro guessed that they didn’t want another one of the lions flying off without leave.

Shiro spoke to the woman hovering awkwardly in front of Black’s head. “Excuse me,” he said, angling to step politely around her.

“Whoa there,” she said, blocking his passage with one arm while the other reached for her taser. “We really can’t let you do that, sir. None of the, er, _lions_ are cleared to launch at this time.”

“I’m not going to launch,” Shiro placated, “I just want to use the equipment inside to contact Keith.” When this failed to persuade, he continued, “Keith Kogane? The pilot of the red lion, who took off yesterday? I want to know what happened just as much as everyone else does.”

“We have literally no way of confirming that,” her partner pointed out.

“You have my word as a pilot,” Shiro said, projecting as much sincerity and trustworthiness as he could, “that if you let me into my lion right now, I won’t fly away. I just want to get in contact with Keith.”

The guards looked at each other uneasily. The one in front of Black’s head shrugged, and slowly dropped her arm to let him through. The other opened his mouth as if to object, but Shiro preempted him with a bright “Thank you!” as Black’s mouth opened. Both soldiers startled at the motion, and Shiro practically leapt into the cockpit before anyone could question him further.

Inside, he found his uniform and bayard piled neatly on his seat where he had left them, unwilling to surrender either to the Garrison for study. He decided to try the comm link in his helmet before he resorted to Black’s native communication systems- all the paladin’s helmets were part of the same “network” (according to Pidge, the scare quotes were entirely necessary, as Altean communications technology functioned very differently to Earth’s), and it was more likely that Keith would be available to receive a call via his helmet than via Red or the castle-ship.

The paladin armor, much like the lions themselves, functioned via an individualized telepathic connection to the user that Shiro couldn’t help but find a little unsettling when he thought too hard about it, and sometimes when he didn’t. The helmets in particular, without the use of any perceptible external signal, just let the paladins _know_ , intuitively, which of their teammates were available to talk to via the network. So Shiro knew immediately that Keith wasn’t wearing his helmet when he put his on.

That wasn’t unexpected. “Keith. Keith, I need to talk to you,” he said, regardless. If Red didn’t feel Keith was too busy (and didn’t feel like ignoring Shiro for some reason), she would probably nudge him to pick up through their telepathic link. “I’m honestly worried about you,” he tried. “I need to know where you are. Please.” He waited a few minutes; long enough for Keith to get to his helmet, given favorable circumstances, and provided Red was telling him that Shiro wanted to talk. Shiro started to worry more, as it was looking increasingly likely that circumstances were not favorable. There was also the increasing likelihood that Keith just wasn’t willing to talk to him, which was upsetting in a different way.

He gave up for the moment and tried the castle. He had to wait less than a minute, this time, for a response.

Allura answered exactly the way he would expect, presenting the precise blend of regal comportment and friendly, sparkling warmth that made her instantly, instinctually likable. A few days at home made him realize rather violently (if not for the first time) how strange it was to know someone seemingly pulled directly out of a fairy tale. Or a magical girl anime, depending. He wondered, sometimes, how things might have been different if the first Altean the paladins met hadn’t been tailored in every way to their cultural archetype of a benevolent fantasy princess.

“Hello, Shiro,” said the benevolent fantasy princess. “Is there something wrong on Earth?”

“No, or at least, I hope not,” he said, a little sheepish. “I was just calling to ask if you’ve seen Keith.”

Her gaze drifted away for a moment, like she was looking at something else in the room with her, before she said, “Actually, he’s here in the castle. Would you like to speak to him?”

“Yes, that would be-” Shiro managed, before he suddenly found himself looking at a clearly unprepared Keith. There was a moment of uncertain silence. “Hi,” he tried.

“Hi,” Keith responded, with a little tic which Shiro knew meant, _Chrissakes, Kogane, is that really the best you can do?_. It was a look that always reminded him of training together at the Garrison. The memory was both painful and warm- sometimes like tea that’s just a little too hot; other times like bleeding onto yourself from a gut wound.

“Keith, are you alright? Did something happen, with the Garrison, or-”

“No, everything’s fine; I mean, they tried to take my armor and my blade, but I just left them in Red-”

“They did that with me too,” Shiro said. His brow furrowed. “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong? I didn’t know you left until this morning, and I was worried.”

Keith’s gaze dropped to the floor. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I know you’re trying to take time off from Voltron right now, and..." He trailed off, seemingly debating his next words with himself.

“That’s not important. I just want to know why you left.” Shiro searched his face for a moment. “If there’s nothing wrong… You know the offer was still open. To stay with me.” That was a bit too on the nose, he thought. “And my dad and grandma,” he added.

Keith made an expression that was hard to process, like poorly formatted text where each line is written over the last. “I… know,” he said, sounding like he didn’t even believe himself, “I was just- trying to plan for the future. I wanted to see what Coran and the Princess were doing. And then when I got here, it turned out the castle was damaged-”

“What!” Shiro blurted.

“The Princess said she didn’t want to keep us from our families any longer. And it wasn’t anything life threatening,” Keith reassured, “but it wasn’t easy for the two of them to fix alone, especially with all the-” he waved his hands around rather vaguely- “diplomacy stuff, and I stayed to help out. It’s looking a lot better now.” Keith glanced around with muted pride, and Shiro realized that it was the engine room in the background rather than the bridge.

“And once the repairs are done?” he asked.

Keith hesitated. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this, Shiro. It’s only been three days. It’ll keep.” He grimaced discreetly, an expression which was frustratingly ambiguous in context.

“Keith, it’s not-” _more important to me to have an adjustment period than it is to be involved in every detail of your life_ , Shiro managed to stop himself from saying. “-Like I didn’t want to hear from you this week anyway. The more I know about what everyone’s thinking, the easier it will be to manage once we’re all ready,” he continued, with what he considered an admirably short pause for revision.

Keith did not look convinced. “Well, what are you thinking?” he deflected, crossing his arms over his chest.

Shiro’s turn to hesitate. “I… don’t know,” he said at last, which was, of course, a total cop-out. “I don’t want to be separated from my family again. Or- the rest of the team. But I don’t know if I could just go back to the Garrison. For a lot of reasons. Or give up space entirely.” He shrugged elaborately.

“I don’t think I could either,” Keith offered, not meeting his eyes.

Then Shiro thought about saying, _We could run away together. Not like really running away. We’d just be exploring. We came to the Garrison to explore, didn’t we? We don’t need a war to justify travelling. Even before, my family knew I’d be gone for months, years at a time. You’re leaving. I could come with you. We shouldn’t be separated. The universe needed Voltron even before Zarkon turned._

_I don’t want to lose you._

What he actually said was, “Don’t go anywhere just yet, alright? I want to at least get everyone together to talk about this before-”

And Keith, looking stricken, said, “Yeah. Whatever you say, Shiro.”

 

* * *

 

Because Keith was a fucking idiot sometimes, he’d kind of started to get his hopes up when Shiro called the castle.

What he was expecting the man to say, he honestly had no idea. “Come back to Earth right now-” not helpful. He couldn’t go back to the Garrison, and he couldn’t give up flying. Unless there was a way to keep piloting Red on Earth, he couldn’t let Shiro- _feelings_ him into staying where he didn’t belong. “I feel obligated to go back to space to help clean up the remains of the Galra Empire and forge diplomatic bonds, so I’ll be joining you-” selfish. Shiro deserved to live his life in peace after everything he’d been through, not to be forced by his overdeveloped moral sensibilities to keep risking his life and sanity. “If you’re leaving, I want to come with you, because I love you and I feel like Voltron is home for both of us-” unrealistic. Completely fucking delusional.

“At least stay for a team meeting before you fuck off to the depths of space-” yeah, that sounds about right.

Allura had left the room pretty early on to give the paladins some privacy to talk, just after making some Significant Faces at Keith which he couldn’t interpret with any confidence. He got up to poke his head out of the door and call her back.

As they both resumed their previous tasks, Allura asked, “So, what did he say?”

“He just asked why I left Earth, and told me not to go anywhere until the end of the week. Like you.” Keith pushed another pile of sorted crystal chips to Allura. “Um. Sorry I took off like that. That probably caused problems for Coran.”

“He told them that you were here on personal business, not because of any danger. I’m sure it was no trouble,” she said, setting the chips into an open panel in a sort of mandala-looking arrangement. She consulted the manual after every three or four she placed.

“Oh,” Keith said.

Allura fixed him with a look. “Was that all he said?”

Keith frowned. “There wasn’t really much to say,” he temporized, dropping several yellow-green chips into the appropriate pile.

“Keith,” she said, exasperated, “I know you think- I know you don’t have relatives on Earth. But the bond forged between paladins is literally legendary. I can’t imagine that he reacted well when you told him that you intended to leave.” She pursed her lips in apparent dissatisfaction. “It’s… an unusual decision for a paladin, in any case. Are you really sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure!” Keith snapped. “I mean- I haven’t decided yet,” he contradicted himself. “I didn’t tell him that I was leaving, anyway, because I’m not leaving! Yet! Maybe! I don’t know! It’s not- if I can’t be sure about leaving, then why did you and Coran send us back to Earth without even telling us the castle was damaged? You guys are part of the team too.” He crossed his arms with finality.

“That’s different,” she argued, but both of them knew she didn’t really believe it. She conceded, “You just all seemed so eager to go back home. Most paladins don’t retire so early, or in such circumstances,” which was a lovely euphemism for _most paladins die in the line of duty before they can decide to retire_ , “but nothing about you was usual. You were all untrained, barely out of childhood, from a planet that had never encountered alien life. What was normal for Altean soldiers ten thousand years ago might not be normal for you.”

“Well, that’s how I feel. What’s normal for humans with families might not be normal for me,” Keith said defensively.

“I just can’t believe that a group of paladins could really want to be separated. I’ve never piloted a lion, but the way my father described it when I was younger…” she trailed off, half-caught in a memory.

Keith relaxed deliberately. He hadn’t flown to Mars to argue with Allura. “I don’t really want to be separated,” he offered. “I don’t think they do either-” _except on my very bad days_ , he didn’t say- “but…”

“But?” Allura prompted.

“They all talked so much about their families. How they wanted to get back to them. That means they want to stay on Earth, right? And if I stayed just for them, I don’t think I’d be satisfied,” he admitted, picking at the skin around his thumbnail somewhat aggressively. “And if I would be- then I’m not the person I thought I was. Maybe that’s not a perfect person, but it’s who I chose to be. I wouldn’t change it.” He set his jaw when he said that, talking past her. Talking _into_ the past. “You don’t want to leave them, either.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want. I am the Crown Princess of Altea- the last surviving member of the royal family. I have a duty to preserve the cultural heritage of my planet, its ideals and values, and whatever survivors remain after… it was destroyed.” That destruction was a wound that Keith didn’t think Allura would ever truly recover from. When she thought of it, or, under extreme circumstances, brought herself to mention it, it would open up like one of the great trenches at the bottom of the ocean: swallowing light, imbued with deadly pressure.

“Well,” Keith said, a little awkwardly, “you don’t have a duty to do it alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter was written before the new episodes and is incidentally the one in which this fic Officially Gets Jossed. This now takes place in an AU where Voltron was actually a thing for several generations and thus had a long time to a. find its place in the universe during peacetime and b. actually become an intergalactic legend. How did the war start, in that case? Shit went down exactly the same way, except the lions had already been created as the product of another rift hundreds or thousands of years before, which either closed on its own or had its own dramatic series of events which got lost to history. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  
> Chapter title is from "When My Time Comes" by Dawes.


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